Resident Evil: Anamnesis
by Nick Blackford
Summary: A group of civilians are involved in a bus crash in Raccoon City as it becomes the center of the T-Virus epidemic. They must pull together to survive and fight their way to safety.
1. Celeste, Nathan and Lisa

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter One: Celeste, Nathan and Lisa

Celeste would be twenty-five in a week, and even on the night of her birthday she was scheduled to be working at Carnegie Love, the small delicatessens that she'd worked at since she was eighteen.

Tonight she was exhausted, work had made the day even longer than they usually felt. She flung her small handbag onto the floor and collapsed onto her sofa chair, an unconscious routine she seemed to follow every weeknight.

Celeste caught a glimpse of her reflection in the television opposite her, she didn't have the energy to look for the remote control. She looked tired; the concave, thick glass of the television screen unflatteringly distorted her slim figure.

The phone suddenly rang, it would have made her jump if she had the energy, and instead, she simply slumped sideways and answered.

"Celeste?" Shrieked the caller, Celeste squinted. "It's Leila. I can't talk for long, I'm in the phone box on the corner."

It was her boss, Leila Donahue. The only voice she didn't want to hear on the other end of the phone at that particular moment. Leila was a cold woman who despite knowing Celeste for almost seven years, had never once smiled at her. Celeste knew a lot of people like that, it was hard not to, living in the busy, bustling Raccoon City.

"What's wrong?" Celeste asked, she knew what was coming.

"Celeste honey, Sheryl's not come in, she's got a fever, can you believe it? Listen, could you come in and cover for her, I have to be somewhere tonight, it's very important; I wouldn't be ringing you if it wasn't." Leila whined.

Celeste was still looking at her reflection in the television; she could see her face begin to sink, and almost drooping and falling from her skull, onto the floor like half-set jelly.

"Leila, I've just gotten home -" Celeste wasn't able to finish.

"Look, I realize the timing is just horrible, but with the way business has been going recently, I can't afford to close up. You know?" Celeste paused for a moment, she wasn't strong enough to let Leila down, and she never had before. Leila carried on spitting familiar pleads down the phone before the phone box ran out of change.

Celeste put the phone down, lifted herself from her sofa chair, picked up her bag again and left her flat, slamming the door behind her.

It wasn't really that far to Carnegie Love, but tonight, when she just wanted to sit down at home, the prospect of making that journey again seemed to pull out her insides. A short bus ride down through central Raccoon City and she'd be there. Celeste stood at the bus stop for the second time that day and lit a cigarette, she pictured Leila standing impatiently inside Carnegie's, serving another miserable customer at the till.

Images of familiar cheeses, breads and meats rushed through her mind, Celeste realized she hadn't eaten since the morning. Her stomach growled as if to remind her.

A police car screamed passed her at high speed, it broke her daydream. She looked for the bus but the street seemed unusually empty. Without warning, a truck rushed passed, following the police car and running down a large road sign on the other side of the road. It startled Celeste and she dropped her cigarette into a puddle.

She watched as the truck roared down the road at a tremendous speed. The ground shook slightly as the vehicles tore into the distant darkness. She stared at the road sign across the road in disbelief, contemplating that if the truck had simply swerved the other way, it could have easily been her lying there, twisted and broken.

Celeste raised her eyebrows and looked down at her last cigarette, bobbing in the puddle next to her. "Fuck's sake." She muttered to herself. She then let out a long sigh and looked up, noticing that the bus was approaching. Grateful for having noticed the bus at all, she prepared herself for her journey back to work.

The thirty-three through midtown was usually packed full of people trying to get home but on this evening, the bus had only half a dozen passengers. She'd noticed that recently she'd been able to get a seat almost every time she got onto one too. She pondered; wondering how this could be considering the buses had been less frequent if anything recently.

A businessman with a briefcase gave her an unjustified, particularly nasty look as she paid the driver for her ticket. There were several people on the bus, all of them staring at her as she made her way to her usual seat. It was as grubby as any other bus in town, colourless and dimly lit with graffiti either scratched or scribbled onto almost every surface.

As she sat down, Celeste looked at the other passengers wondering who they were and where they were going.

"They're probably all going home." she thought. Celeste turned to look out of the window as the bus began carrying her reluctantly to work.

"You promised we'd spend some time together tonight." Amanda remained defiant; it had been weeks since Nathan had spent an evening in, weeks since he had spent any real time with her.

The young, newly wedded couple had exchanged vows and since then seemingly less words each evening thereafter.

"You know Amanda, it costs money to keep this flat looking like something out of a catalogue. I don't enjoy going to work every night." Nathan yelled. He only yelled like this when he was lying but Amanda was oblivious to Nathan's lies, he was a convincing liar when he had to be.

Nathan wasn't going to work every night. Sure, some nights he was but the majority of them were spent going to Annalisa's flat. Annalisa; confident, happy and an escape from the pressures of work and married life.

Amanda had looked slightly upset by Nathan's outburst and for this he felt slightly guilty, but he didn't let on.

"Look, I just miss you. You're always there." Amanda said softly, she was looking at Nathan, but he wasn't looking at her, he was facing the front door with his back to her and his hand already on the handle.

"The club can't run itself." Nathan said softly, a sense of regret about his voice. For a second he considered turning around and forgetting Annalisa's offer. He'd regret for the rest of his life that he didn't.

Without exchanging another word Nathan left the flat. After coldly leaving the building he reached into his denim jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone and dialed a number quickly.

"Hey," Nathan smirked "yeah I'm on my way, give me half an hour alright? Yeah. Ok I'll see you soon." Hanging up Nathan made his way half way around the block to a bus stop where he waited.

It was a convenient coincidence that the thirty-three through midtown went to Annalisa's house as well as the club where he worked, it had made things that little bit easier with Amanda. She had once waved to him from the window of their apartment while he waited for a bus. He had remembered how little things such as waiting at the wrong bus stop could get a cheating husband caught. Nathan glanced up at the window but Amanda wasn't there this time.

He loved Amanda, she was warm, funny and loving, she appreciated him fully. But Nathan also loved Annalisa, not because she provided anything special that Amanda couldn't, simply because she wasn't Amanda.

Nathan was thirty years old and was already feeling as if he could predict the rest of his life in the same way you could predict the ending of a badly made movie. The excitement and unpredictable nature of his relationship with Annalisa quenched a thirst in Nathan that was ironically saving his naively conceived marriage to Amanda.

Nathan turned his cell phone off realizing that his bus was arriving.

As a doctor, it wasn't unusual for Lisa to be paged by the hospital when she was urgently needed and not working. Today she had been paged while eating at a local diner with a friend.

During her journey to the bus-stop a further eight alerts had beckoned her to the hospital; with each one her journey was given further urgency. It frustrated her to have to wait for a bus; she would rush, taking as little time as possible to get to the bus stop.

When she finally got there completely out of breath she simply had to wait. Getting a cab in Raccoon City nearly always took longer somehow; the hospital wouldn't pay her fares either.

She had often contemplated that the speed of the bus driver could determine a life or death situation at the hospital but she tried not to think of things in such a way.

Being a nurse Lisa had one major flaw; she was terribly over-weight. This made rushing to the hospital a huge ordeal. Time after time she had arrived at the bus stop, her face pressed red by her blood pressure as she gasped for breath. Strangers at the bus stop would look at her, as if they expected her to faint or even explode.

Once a child had laughed at her attempting to get her breath back, unfazed by the fact she was looking straight at him he had laughed none-the-less for what felt like an hour before his mother had told him to stop.

She was meant to be on a diet but while eating in the diner with her friend she had consumed two large Danish pastries. She felt hypocritical working as a nurse while parading around the hospital displaying her obvious condition. It felt like a condition to her.

She'd seen big women on television shows crying out that they're 'big and proud'. Lisa wasn't proud at all, she was suffocated and restricted by her weight and it depressed her more than anything in the world. Perhaps if she were fitter she wouldn't need to take the bus at all, how guilty that had made her feel. The thought lingered for a while but was then abruptly forgotten as the bus appeared in the distance. Relief replaced guilt as Lisa waited to board the bus.


	2. Fate Has a Funny Way

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Two: Fate Has a Funny Way

The bus made its way through mid-town Raccoon City. Streetlights rushed passed, glowing streaks of light dancing behind the window Celeste's head was leaning against. She honestly didn't think she'd be able to make it through the day awake, she imagined it now; asleep at the counter, dead to customers, Leila would come in and catch her sleeping of course.

Thinking about how bad it would be if she lost her job, Celeste went through her bag and pulled out a small bottle of pills. "_Stay-A-Wake_" tablets were a necessity at times like these; she swallowed a couple, finding it hard to take them without water.

Nathan looked around the bus as it drove, looking out the window had lost its appeal, and there was no one outside to eye up anyway. However, he had spotted Celeste as soon as he'd gotten onto the bus, it was hard not to notice her, she wasn't wearing anything particularly flashy so he'd figured she was probably from one of the less attractive parts of the city.

It didn't matter though; her face was stunning in a simple, beautiful way and even someone as arrogant as Nathan could appreciate that. Her dark complexion and shapely cheekbones had pinned his eyes to hers, hers of course remained focused on the streetlights which were now the main source of light outside.

Lisa had her breath back now. There were only a couple of other people on the bus so embarrassment was minimal. She had sat down after seeing a pretty, slim girl on the bus, which had again led her to thinking about her weight.

Lisa wasn't looking forward to work today, this wasn't unusual and often on the way to work she would fantasize about an extraordinary event stopping her from work in the same way a child would hope to evade school. A freak snowstorm would do, or maybe terrorists could hijack the bus, anything would be okay right about now for Lisa.

As the bus continued at a high speed down the high street, the driver had noticed just how empty the roads were. The bus's lights struggled dimly to illuminate the road ahead. In all his years of bus driving, of which there were twenty-three, Mike had never once seen roads as clear as the ones in front of him now.

Mike drove confidently because of this; it was a route he had driven more times than he cared to think about. Every day an array of people boarded his bus; did one of them remember his face? Out of the hundreds and hundreds of people, not one of them did, and if it weren't for Mike's losses than it wouldn't be a thought that haunted him constantly.

Twenty-five years ago Mike had everything, a beautiful girlfriend, the best friends a man could ask for and a fortune. Michael Sunderland was a well-known name in America twenty years ago, lead guitarist of Project Detour, a hugely successful rock band that consisted of his most treasured of companions.

The band made it big, Mike got rich and found the girl of his dreams. But fate has a funny way of taking away what it gives to the most deserving of people and Mike lost everything. A heroine addiction sucked any goodness straight out of Mike's life and to that day a past that felt like it belonged to another person lay dormant in his memories.

For a man that wanted to forget most of his life, being a bus driver wasn't the best of occupations for Mike as it allowed constant time to think. Now was one of those times.

The black tarmac swept effortlessly, silently beneath the bus, there wasn't another vehicle in sight. Mike checked out the side mirror to his left through the window, nothing. Looking back at the road ahead of him Mike saw, for what can only have been half a second, a figure in the road.

The impact blew any thoughts from Mike's head as glass showered him. The bus span erratically, its bulk and weight thrown completely out of control. The road screamed as the bus threw its passengers from their seats and rattled them inside its metallic belly. Twisting metal squealed as the rubber tires burnt into the road, injecting smoke into the bus. The lights outside, which had seemed distinctively pretty once, were now a nightmarish whirl surrounding the bus as it ground clumsily to a halt.

Finally the bus was still; thin smoke floated through the bus as its passengers lay wrecked among the glass, still as the dead.


	3. Black Feathers

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Three: Black Feathers

Dust swept over everything, softly like snow as a hard silence rang through the bus wreckage. Celeste opened her eyes; fragments of glass fell from her hair. A heaving pain in her head prevented her from sitting up too quickly. It took her a good few seconds to remember where she was and what had happened.

Her vision was blurred, she waited for it to adjust, and slowly everything came into focus. The glass had come from the windscreen which was now nothing but a concave spider-web of cracks splashed with blood. She checked herself over quickly, the blood wasn't hers.

Lisa had woken to the sound of Celeste sitting up, she'd hit her head on the seats in front of hers and had been knocked out cold. She wiped the warm blood from her eyes and then held her hand firmly over the cut on her forehead.

"Is everyone okay?" Lisa yelled before standing to get a better view. The bus driver was unconscious next to the doors of the bus, which were twisted, broken out of shape and clearly wouldn't be able to open now.

Another man towards the back of the bus appeared to be unharmed but was clearly disorientated. Lisa made her way to the driver. On her way through the debris she noticed several seats crushed into one another, a man's arm was protruding from the contorted metal. He had been crushed to death but was still holding a suitcase, his knuckles white from the deadened grasp.

The carnage shocked Lisa but her there was nothing she could do now to help the unfortunate passenger, so much destruction had devastated the entire bus in a matter of seconds.

Lisa knelt down next to the driver, careful that she cleared any glass before applying her weight to her knees.

"I'm okay," Celeste said brushing herself down as she stood up. "Hey you, you all right?" Celeste asked across the length of the bus at Nathan, she deliberately avoided looking around too much at the horrors sprawled around her. Nathan looked up despondently.

"I'll be okay," He said, his face glum and pale in the flickering lights on board the bus. "We hit someone didn't we?" Nathan asked as he took in the horrific shape the front of the bus had taken.

Celeste followed Nathan's gaze and felt the same sickness she saw in Nathan as she looked at the blood that had forced its way through the cracks in the glass. "We need to get out of here." Nathan demanded, suddenly standing in a panic.

He marched down the length of the bus tripping over gore, passed Celeste and over Mike, who was still unconscious and being attended to by Lisa. Nathan firmly gripped the bus doors and pulled with all the strength he could summon up, but shaking them only sprinkled more fragments of glass onto the floor. The noise had caused Mike to stir.

"Hey, mister." Lisa put her hand on Mike's shoulder and he squinted; it was a miracle he was alive, the driver's seat had been completely crushed inwards by the impact.

Lisa turned to Celeste who had made her way to the front of the bus. "He must have jumped out of the way just in time." She said. Celeste was looking at Nathan, who was still looking through doors of the bus.

He was an attractive man, older than her but obviously overwhelmed by the situation. He looked confused and shaken.

"What's your name?" Celeste asked him. The seemingly pointless question was a distraction from their surroundings, a necessary one.

"Nathan." He said looking back at her, his eyes clearly haunted.

Lisa was handling the situation like any nurse, with efficiency, almost like she'd expected the whole thing.

Mike still hadn't completely come to and Celeste, well, she wasn't really sure why she hadn't slipped into shock in the same way Nathan had. While she obviously wasn't expecting the crash, its happening hadn't been hard for her to take in somehow. She had, however, noticed her hands shaking uncontrollably.

"You want some help with those doors?" She asked. Nathan nodded.

Lisa had sat Mike up now, who'd managed to ask Lisa her name.

"Name's Lisa, I'm a nurse." She'd said in a friendly concerning voice, the voice you would expect of a nurse.

"That's lucky." He'd replied, and the pair had smiled weakly at each other.

Nathan and Celeste had managed to pull the doors inwards slightly, but they simply wouldn't budge any more despite their joint effort.

"It looks like we're stuck then." Celeste said and sat down on one of the seats, defeated. She turned to Mike who had tried to get up but winced.

"Try the emergency release." Mike pointed just to Celeste's side, but tugging at it did nothing. Celeste sat expectantly; help couldn't be too far away.

"I don't get why nobody's here." Nathan said, still looking through the broken doors. He had noticed before any of them that there was not one other person on the streets outside. The rest of them slowly grew to the realization that they weren't completely out of trouble yet.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell-phone and dialed 911. The others watched as he stood impatiently, looking frantically for movement in the stillness outside. None of them knew how long they'd been knocked out for, but however long it was, shouldn't another vehicle have noticed the crash? How can nobody have even heard it? Where was everybody?

"No answer..." Nathan said, the colour drained from his face. Celeste looked down at the floor in confusion and then outside. The foreboding emptiness was completely unnatural and it prompted her approach to the doors where Nathan stood. She called out into it, perhaps to stir it awake somehow.

"HELLO?" Silence. "IS ANYBODY THERE?" She yelled. Lisa stood up.

"People will come." Lisa said, but she had also noticed the emptiness outside. It wasn't just that either, since they had all woken up, since they hadn't had the engine of the bus running to drown out the silence, they had for the first time realized just how loudly it rang through the air.

Celeste noticed the cut on Lisa's forehead, it was still bleeding.

"No answer. How can there be no answer?" Nathan spat, agitated, looking at his cell-phone. He tried dialing Amanda's number but he was given the same repeating tone in return. Perhaps the cell-phone had broken in the crash somehow. Unlikely, but the only plausible explanation he was willing to accept.

"ANYBODY?" Celeste yelled, she heard her own voice echo away from them, being carried off into the darkness, delivering her calls of help to no avail.

"Try that." Lisa pointed. Nathan turned away from the door and made his way back towards the back of the bus. Lisa had spotted a twisted length of metal frame that lay among the glass. Nathan picked it up, holding it in the same way a baseball player would hold his bat readying to hit a home run. Holding it high above his head, the others all shut their eyes and leant back. The metal bar swung into the glass and sent a ripple of cracks throughout the whole window. The glass was reinforced heavily and while he was weakening it with every blow it wasn't shattering apart. Nathan resorted to kicking the window in an attempt to break it out of the frame completely.

The window was almost out; Nathan was about to give the failing glass one last kick when suddenly it's collapsing shape bent inwards from the outside with a loud crack. Everyone jumped, no one had expected it and for a short time they didn't know how to react.

Nathan looked at the glass, a ring of bloody cracks had forced through the glass from the outside. Black feathers had stuck to the glass, one of them drifted in through the broken doors Celeste stood at. Everyone followed it as it drifted downwards and rested silently on the blood-splattered floor of the bus.

It was the sound that came next that truly confused all of them. A loud fluttering enveloped the entire bus, the sound of strong flames coming from all around. Another explosive smash broke the silence from the back of the bus and within seconds every window exploded inwards.

"We're on fire. We're on fire and this damned thing is going to explode. We're all going to die." Celeste thought, but rationality reminded her that where there's fire, there's smoke and heat and she could see or feel neither.

A bombardment of scratching and punches battered the bus, rocking it in every direction at once. In pure panic and confusion Lisa, Nathan and Celeste all threw themselves to the floor. It was only when Celeste dared to open her eyes, what was going on became apparent. Black feathers filled the bus and swirled around in the mayhem. Blood splattered the bus from the outside, as the impacts became even more frequent.

"What is that?" Lisa screamed, her eyes still welded shut. Under the amazing noise, only Celeste had heard her shouting and she knew exactly what the noise was, she just couldn't believe it.

When the sound of smashing glass and denting metal finally subsided, the undeniable squawks of crows could be heard outside. Lisa slowly opened her eyes; Celeste was sitting up, as was Mike. "Is it over?" Lisa asked as the swarm of black feathers slowly settled.

"I think so. I hope so." Celeste said standing up, hunched with caution. Nathan followed, gripping the metal bar in his hands so tightly his knuckles were white.

"I think it's time to get off this fucking bus." He muttered before punching out the window that he had so vigorously tried to break just moments earlier.

"Not a wise move. What if more of those birds try to get in?" Celeste thought, but even before she had finished thinking it the glass had fallen away and the idea of getting off the bus had become the priority.

Nathan took a step back, the sight was almost impossible to take in. There must have been at least fifty crows that he could see from where he stood, most of them dead, others flapping around on the ground outside squawking awkwardly. The amount of blood was incredible, not one of the birds was able to stand, let alone fly. "You lot might want to take a look at this," Nathan urged, gesturing to them that it was safe to get closer. "Come on."

Lisa helped Mike up and soon enough the four of them stood at the window staring out in disbelief.

"Oh my God… This doesn't make sense." Celeste said shaking her head slowly; the sight was horrific, the sight would have saddened her if the crows had not been so savage in their attack. Instead it filled her with a terrible dread. The same fear of the irrational that she had felt in the strangest and most chilling of her nightmares.

"Let's just get out of here. Now." Nathan said with his phone to his ear. "I'm not even getting a signal anymore..." he looked at the others, each of them still staring at the mass of black, feathered corpses outside in shock.

What was strangest to everyone at that moment was that the streets were still empty. Not one person had heard any of the commotion in the middle of the high street. No one else had come to help and because of that, it still didn't feel real, it still felt like a really bad dream.


	4. A Thousand Black Daggers

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Four: A Thousand Black Daggers

The four of them clambered out of the bus one at a time. Nathan was first, after putting his cell-phone away he inelegantly scrambled out of the bus from the window. It was while climbing out that they had realised the bus had actually bent out of shape and the window was a few extra feet off of the ground.

"A hand?" Celeste asked, slightly perturbed at the fact Nathan hadn't offered but was instead checking his phone again. With a look of slight reluctance he took her hand and helped her dismount from the window safely and without landing on one of the bird carcasses that littered the ground around the bus.

Mike was next; his departure was awkward and painful even with Celeste and Lisa's assistance. He shunned the pain away with an uneasy but grateful, wincing smile none-the-less.

"I don't think I can do this." Lisa said, gripping the edges of the broken window frame with both hands. She looked at the others. It wasn't the height that bothered her; it really wasn't that high, it was the awkwardness of the climb out. She'd never climbed over fences when she was younger. She'd never adventured through the marshland near her house like her brothers and their friends had when they were younger. She'd certainly never imagined herself needing to climb out of a raised bus-wreckage.

"Just don't even think about it, just jump." Celeste urged.

Nathan wasn't even watching now, his back was turned to the others and he was continuously trying to phone Amanda. The oppressive, repeating tone suddenly riddled with him with guilt.

"This is what you get," he thought. "This is what cheating liars get." And with that he restrained himself from throwing his phone to the ground.

Lisa landed badly. In any other circumstance she would have been endlessly embarrassed but it wasn't a time for embarrassment. Celeste helped her quickly to her feet again and for the first time the group was stood outside.

They had just about managed to begin reading their surroundings when the desperate calls of maddened crows began to call once again, this time from the sky.

"Run!" Celeste yelled.

The four of them darted in the same direction, instinctively towards the brightest light they could see, emitting from a small café on the corner of the street.

The choir of shrill shrieks grew closer as they ran. Mike was struggling, as was Lisa. Celeste ran in desperation, as fast as she could, she knew she was advancing ahead of the pair and while it wasn't a nice feeling, she did not intend on slowing down. Nathan was furthest ahead, his legs mechanically lunging at such a velocity he almost buckled beneath himself.

Celeste risked glancing back. The sight of a thousand black daggers darting out of the sky completely threw her. She almost tripped but used the opportunity to call to the others.

"Hurry!" She screamed.

The huge cloud of what looked like fluttering black paper in the darkness was gaining on them. The squawking had become a deafening disharmony of angry, child-like screams. The café was just ahead. Breaking his run into a kick and using his full momentum, Nathan crashed through the doors and into the café. The others swiftly followed; Nathan threw the café's shutters down as Celeste, Lisa and Mike dived into safety.

The same suicidal explosion of blood and feathers pelted the shutters and the front of the café for what seemed like an age. If its glass front and windows had taken the full force of the demonic birds, all four of them would have undoubtedly been killed. Nathan had saved their lives.

"Quick thinking." Celeste said turning to Nathan, clutching her chest in breathlessness. There was a silence as they all caught their breaths. Lisa was having particular difficulty; she couldn't remember the last time she had run so fast in her life. She could feel the blood pulsating, pushing through her, making her entire body throb.

The café was comfortably lit. There were sofas, tables and chairs sporadically arranged so the busy workers of Raccoon City could sit with their copies of The Raccoon and catch up on the day's events with ease. If it wasn't for the bird blood seeping slowly under the bent shutters, the situation the group found themselves in would have seemed quite normal.

The first thing they did was search the café for a phone. There was one, but it had been torn off the wall and was now no more than a heap of cracked plastic and broken plaster. There were signs of a struggle in the café; some chairs lay on their sides and some plates and other kitchenware lay on the floor, much of it broken. The kitchen of the café was a haven of food and drink and although nobody was hungry, everybody helped themselves to a can of something.

There was a back door to the café, securely shut with a key in it. That was something, at least they weren't trapped. For now though, they were safe and that's all that mattered.

They sat together, around one of the smaller tables at the back of the café, all of them shaken from the events of the last fifteen minutes. There was an awkward silence to begin with; Nathan was reading one of the menus from the café. Rather he was scanning the words with his eyes, not paying them any notice.

"Is your leg okay?" Celeste said to Mike. She was taken aback at how quickly he had been able to run on it considering moments earlier it was a struggle for him to sit up.

"I didn't get a chance to stop." Mike muttered. The figure falling into the path of the bus plagued his mind. He put his hand over his mouth in shock as the thought repeated over and over.

"What's your name?" Celeste asked him.

"Mike." He replied, it had taken him a moment.

"Listen to me Mike, what happened back there wasn't your fault. Something else is going on here tonight. Something much bigger than us, that bus and those birds."

Mike looked up; he hadn't really seen the faces of the people he found himself with yet. The panic and confusion that had surrounded their introduction hadn't allowed it. But now, here in this strange café with these strange people, four very distinct faces came to light.

The first was a young girl; the girl that was talking to him, a striking, dark skinned, pretty face. The other woman in their group was slightly older, an overweight, sympathetic looking nurse. Then there was the young man, there was something Mike couldn't quite pin-point about him, he didn't know what it was but he had made his mind up that second that he didn't like him. He didn't trust his face.

"I've never seen birds behave like that," Lisa said. "They wanted to hurt us. All of them." A shiver scuttled down her back.

"Where is everybody?" Nathan asked. But nobody had an answer. They all thought about it for a moment. How could everybody just have disappeared? Everybody. It occurred to Celeste that nobody would know where they were either.

"Hiding," She said. "Everybody's hiding." The grim reality that something much bigger was going on hit all of them. That same feeling of dread she had felt earlier had crept back and this time they'd all felt it.

Lisa had spotted two speakers in the corners of the café.

"Do you think we could hear the radio through those?" She asked, pointing. Celeste got up quickly and went behind the counter. Sure enough there was a music system and an option to listen to the radio. She turned it on quickly, desperate at the thought they might be able to find out what was going on.

Static crackled out of the speakers. With every turn of the dial on the system the hearts of all four survivors sank further. Perhaps the radio was broken. Perhaps the terrible truth of the matter was that it wasn't, it wasn't broken at all.


	5. More Than Sick

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Five: More Than Sick

The people of Raccoon City, like those of any other large city, had very little time for each other. It was funny then, that suddenly four of them had been put together, around a table in a café like old friends. Outside the café however, beyond the empty dark streets, acts of most deprived and sickening violence were occurring that none of them could possibly imagine.

"I was on my way back into work," Celeste began. The group had exchanged names and were now trying to backtrack the days events before the accident in an attempt to gather clues about what had happened. "Everything seemed normal enough. There wasn't much traffic, but …" She trailed off as she remembered the speeding police car and truck she had seen while waiting at the bus stop.

"I noticed that too," Mike said, his leg up on another chair with his trouser-leg rolled up. His leg looked badly bruised and swollen below the knee. "There wasn't anybody on the road. Hardly anyone on the rounds all day either."

"The hospital were I work was inundated with patients, but I noticed the streets were real quiet too." Lisa added. She hadn't received any more pager alerts though, that was strange.

"So what now?" Nathan snapped. "We sit here and wait?" His tone was aggressive.

"There's not a lot else we can do." Celeste said before looking back at the shutters.

"For who?" Nathan yelled. "Who the fuck is coming to help us when those things are outside? I know I wouldn't."

"Maybe _you_ wouldn't." Mike said.

"What's that supposed to mean? You're the one who crashed the bus and got us into this mess. This is your fault." Nathan barked.

"Calm down, it's not like we don't have time to think about what to do next. And this is _nobody's_ fault." Lisa said defiantly.

"If the hospital's so busy then we should go there. The more people the better, safety in numbers and all that." Mike suggested, not making eye contact at Nathan.

"It's not a bad idea, and it's not far from here." Lisa said. Somewhere familiar, she liked the idea. While the café was safe there was a bad atmosphere about it. It was too brightly lit for the situation they were in and Nathan obviously needed some space.

"I'm not going with any of you," Nathan said standing up. "I'm going to find my girlfriend." He said. _"Girlfriend?_ _Which one?"_ his conscience asked him. Where was Amanda now? Amanda, who he had been so eager to leave earlier. If he'd only known how much he'd need her less than an hour later he'd never have left.

"That's it then? You're just gonna take off, _on your own_?" Celeste asked.

"I'm not staying _here_ and I'm sure as hell not going to the hospital. I'm finding my girlfriend and then I'm gonna find out what's going on." Nathan pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, slung it on and made his way to the kitchen door.

"You'll get yourself killed." Celeste shouted. "There'll be more of those birds outside."

"I can handle myself, and I can run faster than any of you." How childish he had sounded. Nathan grabbed the door and swung it open to find a woman standing on the other side. She lunged at him, both hands on his shoulders. Her face was tort and grim. Nathan had his hands on her arms and pushed with all his might, the woman staggered back. It was then he got a proper look at her.

She stood awkwardly, as if her frame had been broken out of shape. Her head was hanging down. Blood-matted hair fell from her balding scalp; it was thin, tangled and dirty. Her dress was loose, torn apart and also filthy. Slowly she regained some sort of balance and raised her head. Her expression was twisted with a vicious anger, her eyes milky and vacant pearls that sat loosely in her thinning face.

Suddenly she lunged forward again, this time faster than before. Her arthritic hands grabbed Nathan's shoulders again as she snarled and snapped. She was trying to bite him, bent on biting him. Celeste and Lisa out of their seats but Nathan didn't need any help, he pushed the woman back again, this time harder than before and she collapsed backwards. Slamming the door shut again he quickly locked it with the key which was luckily still in the door.

"Jesus! What the_ fuck_ was wrong with her?" He yelled.

"Listen." Lisa whispered. From behind the door they heard her scramble to her feet slowly, uncoordinated. She fell against the door and let out a groan. It was low, breathless and husky, the groan of a heavy smoker in the morning. There was a silence. Everyone jumped suddenly as she hit the door. She let out another groan, this one longer, more desperate, she sounded upset that the door wasn't opening, frustrated.

"She's sick." Celeste said.

"That was more than sick." Nathan added, taking a step backwards away from the door which the woman was persistently but weakly throwing her hands at.

"She needs help." Lisa said. The others all looked at her in the same way. "Are you _mad_?" their looks said.

"She tried to fucking bite me." Nathan reminded Lisa.

"We can't leave her out there." Lisa said. The idea of leaving her outside was worse to a woman who spends her time devoted to the sick.

"We can't let her in. I don't want to catch whatever she's got." Nathan retaliated.

"Looked like rabies to me." Mike said from his chair, prodding his leg's new bruise.

"You didn't see her face," Nathan said. "We're not letting her in."

Celeste felt guilty about leaving the woman outside. But her instincts told her that leaving her outside was the right thing to do. After all, she'd tried to attack Nathan when she had the chance of sharing their sanctuary.

"What are you doing?" Lisa asked as she spotted Nathan going through the drawers of the kitchen. He didn't answer; instead he pulled out knife from the rack that sat next to the sink.

"I'm still getting out of here, and I'm not having that diseased bitch out there trying to stop me." He said, admiring the sharpness of the knife he had chosen, the largest of the set.

"You don't need that." Celeste said. "She could hardly walk."

"Don't I? I'm willing to bet that between those birds and her," Nathan pointed at the door with the knife. "There's plenty more reasons I'm going to need this." Nathan pushed the knife behind his belt on his side and made his way back to the door.

It was the first time any of them had really put the events together. But before they could dwell on the matter, the shutters at the front of the café shook with a sudden urgency.

"Thank God." Lisa cheered. She began to make her way to the shutters when Celeste tugged at her arm.

"Wait. Just wait a second." She said cautiously. Perhaps she was being over-vigilant but over the moaning from behind the doors and the shaking of the shutters they heard nothing.

"What for?" Lisa asked. The prospect of other people, normal people, was too good to wait for.

"Why haven't they said anything yet?" Celeste warned.

"She's right, listen." Mike said. And as the group stood in silence they heard the same drawn out, grave groans from behind the shutters.

"Shit." Nathan spat. It became clear that there was more than one of them behind the shutters. Two, perhaps three of them were hitting them in the same relentless, exhausted way. "There's only one of them that way," Nathan gestured at the back door. "You guys ready?" He asked, pulling the knife out from behind his belt again.


	6. Fair Share of the Damned

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Six: Fair Share of the Damned

They had collected their own weapons from the kitchen. The selection wasn't great but they hadn't improvised badly. Celeste had taken a bottle of wine from the rack in the fridge and smashed it over the counter creating an effective daggered club. Mike had twisted the leg off one of the tables from which several bent nails protruded from the end. Lisa had found an old bicycle chain which lay next to the door; it didn't make a bad chained whip.

"This seems a bit excessive." Lisa said, staring at her chain. Its edges were sharp. She thought about the damage it could do if she used it at full force.

"This is just a precaution," Celeste reassured Lisa "She'll back off when she sees these." Celeste held up her broken bottle. For a moment she doubted it. "She's not going to back off, she's going to attack us and we're going to have to end up killing her. It's going to be horrific." She thought to herself.

"Celeste, you okay?" Mike asked. Lisa's faith in Celeste's reassurance had vanished at the sight of her doubtful stare.

"You guys ready?" Nathan asked, his hand on the door knob.

"Yeah, let's do it." Celeste signaled, she gave a faded smile to Mike for his concern and passed it to Lisa, a kind of apology for not being more convincing in her confidence.

The door swung open and sure enough the haggard woman stumbled into the kitchen of the café on cue. She stood like a drunk for a moment and then woozily lifted her head again. The same haunted look on her face shocked all of them, she must have been in her twenties yet her face carried the years of a pensioner. The tragedy in her face recoiled into a snarl and she thrust herself at Lisa, both arms swiping in front of her.

"Why me?" Lisa thought, paralyzed by the sheer gore that covered the woman.

The woman had her now, by the shoulders, her grip was sharp but weak. As the woman prized her jaw open and leant towards her, Lisa saw the corners of her mouth crack and split. Her teeth were caked in blood and a stench of death spilled out of her mouth.

Mike's table leg hit the woman on the back of the head with such a force that when he pulled away her head snapped back with the weapon, pinned to the nails that protruded from its end.

"Shit! Lisa, do something!" Mike shouted. He hadn't intended his attack to be so severe.

Lisa pushed the woman off of her and quickly flung the chain as hard as she could at the woman. The chain wrapped around the woman's neck with such force that it drew blood, a stream of it, black and thin, gushed from where the chain had embedded itself.

Mike yanked his table leg back out of her head and with a kick, Nathan had her kneeling on the floor. She looked enraged. At this moment it occurred to Celeste that it looked almost like Lisa was walking her like a dog, a ridiculous thought considering the circumstances. Lisa pulled the chain back with force and the woman's neck snapped around, her throat torn savagely splattered blood all over the fridge and the door.

The woman collapsed. Celeste was right. She _had_ attacked them, they _had_ killed her and it _was_ horrific.

They stood around her body, the amount of blood seemed impossible as is pooled out from around her head and neck.

"I think I'm going to be sick." Lisa said, the chain in her hand dripping blood onto the spotless kitchen floor, a place where hygiene had once been such a meticulous issue, now a bloodbath.

"No time." Nathan urged as the woman began to slowly but surely ready herself to get up again. Before she had gotten to her knees, all four of them had run around her and out through the door. Nathan still had the key and locked the door behind them; he rattled the handle to make sure and then threw the key away.

"That's impossible," Mike ranted "No one survives that." He said shortly before the pounding on the door began again, no groans this time, only a faint gurgling and spluttering.

"Oh God what have we done?" Lisa said, still in a state of shock, still gripping her chain so hard her knuckles were white.

"We should have stayed inside." Celeste said, checking their surroundings. It was an alleyway. It was empty, but it was also narrow and dark.

"Until more of those things found their way inside?" Nathan asked, he was for once not snapping. He didn't have the energy to be angry anymore and though he'd never admit it, he was just as shocked as the others over what had just happened.

"What have we done?" Lisa repeated gormlessly.

"We didn't kill her. She's not dead." Nathan reminded her. She didn't need reminding though, all of them had seen it, how she had begun to climb to her feet again, seemingly unscathed by the savage attack they had inflicted upon her.

"All that blood. It doesn't make sense, it's impossible. She _can't_ be alive, she _can't_." But she was, and she was still reminding them by hitting the door they stood beside.

No one said anything else for a while because no one could comprehend the absurdity of the situation. Each of them tried to understand as they began to walk slowly down the alleyway; Nathan took the lead with Celeste, Lisa and Mike followed behind them. Each of them held their weapon which meant more to them now than they had realised they would when choosing them in the kitchen.

"How's the leg?" Lisa asked him awaking from her trance.

"It's okay." Mike said, still limping slightly.

"You got kids Mike?" She asked. Mike paused for a second as if bringing a photograph of them to his mind.

"Yeah, two. They're seven and ten."

"What are their names?" Lisa asked.

"Jack and Amber. They live with their mum in the suburbs though." Mike said. "Do you think this is happening there?" He asked her suddenly.

"I don't know what _this_ is." She said.

"What about you? Have you got kids?" He asked her. The truth was, Lisa didn't have anybody, let alone children. She had nursed her mother to her grave for so long that she had never met anyone and the few friends she did have didn't fit into her schedule at the hospital.

"No." She said shaking her head. She looked ahead to Celeste and Nathan who were also making conversation. The alleyway was long enough to allow for it.

"I don't see much of my family anymore. We were never that close, Amanda and I just got married a few months ago. She's my family." Nathan explained to Celeste.

"Where is she?" Celeste asked. "That's where you're going isn't it?"

"Uptown. Eton Avenue, it's back up where the twenty-five came from," Nathan explained staring at the ground. "She's all alone. All this is going on and I'm not there, it's not right." He said, clearly disappointed in himself, angry at himself.

"You think it's going on everywhere?" Celeste asked.

"If you want the truth, I think it's the end of the fucking world," he said. "I think Hell's had its fair share of the damned and to punish us for being so shitty it's sending them back." Nathan said brandishing his knife.

"You really believe that?" Celeste asked, she could see in his eyes that he did.

"I'm not a religious man, but if you can give me a scientific reason, actually _any_ other reason behind what we saw in that café back there I'd like to hear it."

"I can't." Celeste said solemnly, she wished she could but there wasn't anything she could say to put Nathan's theory to rest. She almost believed it herself.


	7. The Sky Gave Way

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Seven: The Sky Gave Way

The walk through the alleyway had proved to be a safe shortcut and now Celeste, Nathan, Lisa and Mike stood at a fork where the alleyway broke into opposite directions.

"The hospital is just down there." Lisa pointed.

"I guess this is where I split." Nathan said looking down the other alleyway. He knew it would be a much longer journey where he was going.

"Don't you think it would be safer to come to the hospital with us?" Celeste asked in a vane attempt to get Nathan to change his mind. It didn't seem right that anyone should make such a journey alone.

"Don't worry about me. I have to find Amanda." Celeste couldn't argue, she imagined herself in his position. It made her envy him slightly, she had no one to worry about and while it was a burden she didn't have to carry, it also reminded her of how alone she was.

"Let me come with you," Celeste blurted. She couldn't quite believe she'd said it. She didn't feel she had responsibilities towards Lisa and Mike; they would be okay with the hospital being so nearby. She also knew that no matter how arrogantly confident Nathan had acted about making the journey alone, he would appreciate the company. "I won't slow you down." She insisted, still holding her broken bottle by its neck at her side. Nathan made sure he didn't look shocked at Celeste's forwardness.

"It's far." Nathan reminded her.

"I know." Celeste said. The idea of going to the hospital had appealed to her less and less since they had left the café.

"You sure about this?" Lisa asked Celeste. To her, the hospital was obviously the safest option; she couldn't make sense of Celeste's decision.

"You're a nurse," She turned to Mike; "and you need your leg looked at. I'll only be in the way; I'd rather get nearer home with Nathan. Go to the hospital, we'll be alright." But Celeste wasn't being entirely honest, there was nothing waiting for her at home and she knew that. She was leaving with Nathan because he was faster and stronger than Lisa and Mike, they would slow her down if they got in trouble. She knew deep down that if going to the hospital wasn't the right decision, she'd wish she'd made another decision.

"Okay then. Well, I hope you find your girlfriend." Lisa said to Nathan.

"I will." Nathan replied. "_But will she be alive?_" he suddenly wondered. Throwing the thought out of his head he turned to Celeste. "Let's go."

With a final farewell, the group of four was split. Lisa and Mike didn't have far to go, but for Nathan and Celeste it was a very different story. They knew the journey ahead of them would be a dangerous one, but at that moment they still had no idea of the atrocities that waited for them deep in the shadows, around every corner of Raccoon City.

"It's probably better if we don't cut through the park; we should still to the main roads where it's lit." Nathan said as the couple walked. The alleyway was filthy, only one distant streetlight illuminated it; its incessant flickering meant that Nathan and Celeste were constantly plunged in and out of darkness.

The pair walked for a while before exchanging any words. Nathan was thinking about Amanda, picturing himself arriving at the house, too late, finding the front door swinging open in the breeze, letting in dead leaves and whatever else lurked outside. He imagined himself running up the stairs to his flat, unsure of what he would find. Celeste was thinking about what her boss Leila had told her earlier that day on the phone, about how bad the business at Carnegie Love had been recently.

"How long had things been going wrong before I even _noticed?_" Celeste thought to herself, she supposed for someone as lonely as she was, a lot longer than most.

"You think they'll be alright?" Celeste asked as they shuffled passed a collection of rusting trashcans.

"Dunno," Nathan said, "Depends what kind of state the hospital is in. And if they run into any of those crazies on the way." He was checking his phone again but it still wasn't getting a signal.

The trashcans they had passed were all of a sudden thrown into the walls of the alleyway with a tremendous crash. Both Nathan and Celeste buckled from the sudden explosion of sound. Spinning around they watched as one of the trashcan lids clumsily rolled towards them before clashing to the ground. They both stared in silence, waiting.

"I don't see anything." Celeste whispered.

"On the wall." Nathan whispered back.

There it was, now so obvious Celeste couldn't believe she hadn't spotted it. Sprawled across the wall above the bins was what at first sight looked simply like a man. It was difficult to see in the poor light but it was clearly skinless, its surface was raw and wet, shimmering in the dark. Its hands and feet were lengthened claws that pinned it to the brickwork effortlessly, its face a tort, featureless stretch of meat which was home to only a mouth and the base of the brain that sat upon its head, exposed.

Like a snake, the creature moved precisely, silently towards them for a couple of yards. Its movement was acute and fluid but slow, much like that of a tarantula. As Celeste gasped the creature raised its head and let out a lengthy hiss, the kind of drawn out death rattle a person makes seconds before becoming another victim of a terrible cancer.

Nathan nudged Celeste and as she turned to him he put his finger to his lips. Celeste held her breath and looked back at the creature which was now a good distance closer. It was perfectly still, a statue, as if it hadn't moved at all.

Nathan quickly threw his knife, flicking the handle as he let go so that it span, picking up speed as it propelled itself through the air. The knife missed the creature but sparked off the brickwork with a loud ping that caused it to retract its head and shoulders.

Celeste felt Nathan grab her hand quickly; the creature began to scream as they turned around and ran as fast as they could. The scream bounced off the walls of the alleyway, the high-pitched shriek of an eagle but with the hoarse undertone of a snarl. It was a terrifying, piercingly shrill sound that seemed to last forever.

The creature sprang from the wall suddenly, its full weight thrown into the darkness above the running couple. It fell behind them, landing perfectly, perched like a dog. It had landed precisely where it wanted to; its skinless brow lifted its top lip as its jaw snapped open. With perfect timing, an endless tongue whipped out of its warped mouth and slapped itself tightly around Celeste's ankle, sending her to the ground and dragging her backwards towards it.

She had lost her grip of Nathan, hitting her face and arms badly in the fall, now she was being dragged across the coarse, wet ground adding insult to her injuries. She yelped, spinning quickly onto her back. Although the broken bottle was now more of a broken bottle end, she realised she still had an effective weapon and readied herself to use it among the confusion of the attack.

Nathan had begun to run towards Celeste but the creature had stopped dragging her. It had her where it wanted her now and quickly scuttled over her, its tongue quickly slithering back into its grisly face. Quickly she plunged the bottle into the creature's face, the glass sank in and scraped downwards against bone as she pushed. Its skin broke and the muscle beneath it tore quickly as the rigid glass clung into it, ripping it downwards and spilling small rivers of blood. The creature perched itself again, flicked back its head and let out another deafening cry.

Nathan fiercely kicked the creature's blooded face and readied his knife in front of him; it had tumbled backwards awkwardly and was now on its back thrashing both arms and legs above itself like a dying insect.

As Nathan pulled Celeste to her feet the sky gave way with a loud crack and heavy rain began to shower them. The creature propelled itself back into a sitting position with effortless strength; quickly it laid its belly flat with the soaked ground and began to scamper towards them.

They burst out of the alleyway sprinting, back onto the main road and straight into the path of an ambulance. It screeched to a stop and the doors popped open.

"Get in!" a woman yelled. Running around the ambulance, Celeste and Nathan were met by Lisa. She slammed the doors behind them as they climbed aboard. Mike was driving and made sure they sped off with haste.


	8. Amanda

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Eight: Amanda

"Let me take a look at those." Lisa said. Celeste took the towel away from her cheek. The cuts and grazes she'd sustained weren't serious.

"The hospital's gone." Mike called back.

"Gone?" Celeste asked, confused.

"Yeah," Lisa said, hanging her head slightly. "The whole thing's fallen down; it's just a big pile of rubble," She wondered how many of her co-workers had died in the devastation. "I still can't believe it. I can't believe any of this." She said shaking her head, wiping the blood from Celeste's forehead.

"It's crazy," Celeste agreed. "We were attacked by something," Celeste explained, she didn't know how to explain what it was to people who hadn't seen it. "It wasn't human."

"It wasn't, but it _looked_ human enough, like it might have been, once." Nathan guessed.

"The city's full of monsters," Mike said. "We should get out, just drive right out and find somewhere." He said decisively.

"We're getting my girlfriend first." Nathan said quickly.

And so the group continued to drive through the pouring rain, to find Amanda, following the route that the bus had taken them earlier that night, with no need to stop at red-lights and no traffic it wouldn't be a very long journey.

Lisa and Mike had been lucky, they had found the hospital a smoldering wreck, but near to what had been the entrance was the ambulance, the doors open and the keys in the ignition with the engine running.

The ambulance radio spat static but Mike had left it on, to drown out the silence rather than in the hope of hearing a transmission.

"Thanks for helping me out back there." Celeste said to Nathan who was drying his face with a paper towels.

"Anyone else would have done the same." Nathan said modestly. While both of them had lost their weapons in the encounter with the long-tongued creature, they hadn't been badly hurt.

Lisa wiped the last of the blood from Celeste's brow.

"Dear God." Mike said, clearly shocked. The others leant towards the front of the ambulance to look out of the window. Outside, overturned cars littered the street, thankfully none obstructed the road. Fire engulfed one car, flames also poured out of several windows in the distance.

"No bodies." Celeste remarked. The others stared as the debris and destruction passed them, Lisa climbed into the passenger seat at the front of the ambulance to get a better view. Mike was slowing down to take everything in and to make sure he didn't hit any of the debris that covered the road.

Without notice, a hand of huge claws tore through the ceiling of the ambulance. The metal had peeled like paper under the force, the hand swiping inches above Celeste and Nathan who had ducked instinctively. Rainwater poured in and one of the ambulance lights sparked out.

"It's that thing, it's on the roof!" Nathan yelled

"Speed up!" Lisa shouted. Mike slammed his foot down on the accelerator pedal. The creature, noticing the change in speed, let out that same hideous scream.

They heard it scamper angrily across the top of the ambulance, its daggered hand burst through the top of the ambulance once again, this time nearer Mike, who swerved the ambulance in an attempt to throw the creature off. Frustrated at the creature's resistance he slammed his foot on the decelerator, nearly loosing control but sending the creature hurtling ahead of them. Celeste had fallen embarrassingly into Nathan's arms and Lisa had stopped herself hitting the windscreen by grabbing the dashboard. The creature slammed into the road and rolled violently to a stop, alive but broken.

"Run it over." Celeste said, and with that Mike revved up the engine. The creature, as if defiantly screaming at the knowledge of its impending end, let out one last terrible scream before the underneath of the ambulance crushed the life out of it, rolling its broken body out of shape.

They continued driving, some rain got in and a breeze filled the ambulance through the two large gaping holes in its ceiling. Nathan was leaning between Lisa and Mike now, directing him as they approached the flat he shared with Amanda.

"You want to take the next right, then it's the second left, about half way down." Nathan told Mike who nodded.

"_Nearly there_." Nathan thought, his heart pounding. At that moment he wanted to jump out of the ambulance and run, even if it was slower, sitting and waiting was worse somehow.

The ambulance stopped slowly, crunching over the gravel that lay in the driveway of the building. It was an old house, split into several flats after it became too big and expensive to sell as an individual property in the suburbs. Nathan burst out of the back of the ambulance, he pulled out his keys, opened the door and ran into the house.

"I'm going to go see if everything's okay. You wait here." Celeste told Lisa and Mike. She climbed out of the ambulance and realised she had lost a shoe in the alleyway. Carefully pulling off the remaining shoe, she threw it away she made her way carefully over the gravel and to the house. It was still raining.

She pushed open the front door to be confronted by a staircase, Nathan was gone. Dead leaves had collected near the door where the days post lay uncollected.

"Nathan?" She called up the stairs, he didn't reply.

Cautiously but confidently she went up the stairs, they creaked under her uneasily. The silence struck her, as it had over and over again that night. Celeste found the door to what could only have been Nathan's flat swinging open.

She made her way inside slowly, it was a beautiful flat compared to her own. The floors were all made up of polished pine, the corridor smelt of fresh paint. It was definitely the house of newlyweds. Celeste reached a bedroom at the end of the corridor where Nathan sat on a bed.

"She's gone." Nathan said. The window in the bedroom was broken and the curtains together with the rail they hung from had been torn from the wall. The room was a mess and there was blood on the end of the bed, enough of it to presume something quite serious had happened.

"Oh Nathan, I'm so sorry." Celeste said, sitting next to him on the bed.

"I was cheating on her. That's where I was going on the bus tonight." Nathan said hurriedly.

"You're here now." Celeste said, she knew it didn't mean anything as soon as she'd said it. She just hadn't wanted to remain silent.

"It doesn't matter now, she's gone. She's gone and it's my fault. Something really terrible has happened to her, I can feel it. I should have _been here_." He said hanging his head.

Celeste watched him for a moment, pity filled her. He was now a broken man, his head buried in his hands, not the same arrogant, selfish individual he'd appeared to be earlier that night. "There's nothing you can do about it now. Nathan… We have to think about what to do next, it's not safe here."

While lifting his head, Nathan held one of his hands over his face and with his thumb and forefinger he pinched the bridge of his nose, wiping away semi-formed tears.

"She was everything I ever wanted. I don't even know why I was cheating on her," he said, looking totally confused. Celeste wanted to tell him that there was a chance Amanda was alive, but from the looks of things it seemed doubtful, if not impossible. She'd never say what she really thought, that Amanda had probably been attacked in their home by something as terrible as what they had encountered that night. "I have to stay here. What if she comes back?" Nathan said, his eyes glistening from accumulating tears.

"Nathan…" Celeste said softly. He looked at the bedside table where a photo sat of the couple on their honeymoon. Amanda's smile lit the picture, Nathan was giving her a piggy-back and a stretch of beach filled the background, it was the kind of picture you'd find in a holiday broacher. It was taken when they had been truly happy together, what had happened since that photograph was taken? How can so much change between two people in so little time? Nathan broke the frame over the corner of the bedside table, pulled out of the photograph and folded it into his pocket. After a few seconds thought he wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve and slowly got up. Celeste followed, put her arm around him and together they left.


	9. A Ghost of the Static

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Nine: A Ghost of the Static

The journey towards the outskirts of town was uneasy. Nathan sat despondently in the back of the ambulance with Celeste who had taken a kitchen drawer on the way out of the flat and filled it with knives and a selection of other make-shift weapons from the kitchen. She stared glumly into the drawer as its contents rattled.

Lisa and Mike hadn't seen what was in the flat, but they knew Amanda wasn't with them and that whatever Celeste and Nathan had seen meant the worst. Suddenly the radio, which was still stuttering a mixture irregular noise and silence burst into incoherent speech.

Lisa leant over and quickly and tuned the radio in an attempt to clarify the voice. Beneath the fuzz the husky, panicked voice of a man began to come through.

"I'm gonna stop." Mike said, and slowly the ambulance pulled over from the main road.

The four passengers waited, the voice was gone, a ghost of the static that had slipped away as quickly as it had begun its disjointed murmur.

"Who do you think it was?" Lisa finally asked frustrated, none of them had caught a word the voice had tried to say.

"Could have been one of those recorded emergency broadcasts." Mike suggested, they all waited, listening for the voice to come back. "Then again, radios can pick up all kinds of shit." He said.

"You think we can use that one to get through to anyone but the hospital?" Celeste asked.

"Another ambulance maybe? The police? To be honest I'm not sure. No harm in trying." Lisa said, she took the radio and spoke into it. "Hello? Can anybody hear us? We're in an ambulance on..." She turned to Mike.

"Lincoln Road" He said after glancing quickly at a street sign outside.

"We're on Lincoln Road, if anybody can hear us, please respond." She put the radio down.

"What does it matter? We've got a good thing going on here; wheels and weapons. We should just get out of town." Nathan said.

"He's right." Celeste added. "They'd probably need us more than we need them anyway. They'll slow us down. We should spend as little time here as –" Celeste was cut off by the return of the voice on the radio.

"… Hear you!" The fractured voice cried. "Please… trapped…." The voice spluttered underneath the crackling of the radio, only the odd word got through.

"Where are you?" Lisa cried after snatching the radio back.

"Didn't you hear me?" Nathan barked, Celeste felt the irritation she could see in his face.

"The Raccoon…. Quickly… They're outside." The radio suddenly drowned the struggling voice out completely.

"The Raccoon? I know where that is." Mike said nostalgically. Memories blurred by the worst years of his life crept from the crevices in his mind. Suddenly he was there again, surrounded by the smoke, by the glaring lights, the music that he was playing and the people who looked up at him, people who wanted to be him.

In that moment of quiet, while Mike dreamt of the perfect life he'd let slip through his fingers, Lisa inwardly mourned her workmates and Nathan wondered where Amanda was, where she lay if she had lost her way and fallen to one of the grim wanderers outside. Celeste hadn't suffered the loss the others had and as she read the faces of her companions she hoped she never would.

"Oh God." Lisa dropped the radio and continued to gape. In the commotion none of them had noticed the accumulation of figures in the road ahead, they were at a distance and walking with the same clumsy demeanor as the woman they had attacked earlier, more of the same, whatever they were. Nathan leant forwards to get a better look through the windshield.

"Oh give us a fucking _break_." he whined as he collapsed back into his seat. Celeste made sure she also sat back down as Mike restarted the engine.

"Hold on." Mike warned, the ambulance swerved quickly into the road and with surprisingly swift precision the awkwardly handled vehicle sped passed the moaning gathering.

"Lisa was it?" Mike asked.

"Yeah." She replied staring at the radio again.

"You've never seen anything like this…working at the hospital, have you?" In the safety of the ambulance the thirst for answers had replaced Mike's fear. Such bizarre events warrant reason, any reason.

"No," She said glumly. She looked back at Nathan and Celeste, neither of them was listening. "It's some kind of mass-hysteria, an epidemic maybe. All the medical knowledge in the world wouldn't explain what managed to tear those holes though." She glanced above Mike at the gaping hole in the roof of the ambulance; the metal had been torn back, peeled like paper.

"This is stupid. We're going to get ourselves killed picking up everyone we come across on the way out." Nathan whispered hurriedly to Celeste. She sat opposite him, leaning towards him so he didn't have to raise his voice.

"I know, look, if things get out of hand we'll all just leave okay? Neither of them want to put us in any more danger, it's just the idea that we might be that guy's last chance…"

Nathan suddenly pictured Amanda. What if she _was_ okay? What if someone else had been _her_ last chance and she'd gotten out of the flat alive, to some place safe?

"Yeah." Nathan said nodding softly. Celeste was taken aback by his reaction; there was something about Celeste that allowed her to get underneath his tough exterior. Celeste didn't understand it, but she didn't question it either; either way the pair of them, strangers, understood each other through and through.

"This is it," Mike said. They had arrived, one of the stores behind them was on fire, illuminating the street with flickering warm light while crackling loudly. In front of them was The Raccoon, a large bar that had attracted the elite socialites of Raccoon City, its impressive appearance was an excuse for the over-priced drinks and door-charge. The neon lights above what remained of its doors glared a garishly bright green in the darkness. "It's changed a lot since I last saw it though." Mike said taking the keys out of the ignition.

The group clambered out of the vehicle, they had all cautiously checked the surrounding street but it stood eerily empty, devastated but desolate.

"The guy on the radio made out like there was something outside trying to get in." Lisa said, staring at the club's doors; one of them was hanging from the hinges, the other splintered in two on the floor. Both were covered in bloody hand prints.

"Looks like we were too late." Lisa said, hanging her head.

"I'm going to take a quick look inside, you lot can wait here." Mike said.

"At least say something first, it looks dark in there. And take this." Nathan said before passing Mike one of the knives he'd collected from his kitchen. It might have been cowardly of him, even cowardly to let Mike go into the bar alone, but the knife served as some kind of recompense.

"Yeah. Thanks." Mike turned to the doorway, it was dark inside, almost pitch black but he could see just enough to know there wasn't someone standing in front of him, waiting for him to step into their grasp. Part of him couldn't believe where he was, his old haunt. How different the circumstances had been the last time he'd been there.

The others watched attentively as Mike disappeared into the bar without them.

"What's that?" Celeste whispered.

"What?" Nathan said back, Lisa looked round as Celeste winced, she was trying to listen to something. And there it was, distant but definite, the sound of metal jingling, like spare change in a persons pocket as they ran.

"Sounds like…" Celeste waited, the sound was getting louder, closer.

"RUN!" Nathan yelled suddenly, "Hey man! Get out of there! Hurry!" Nathan, Celeste and Lisa scrambled back into the ambulance.

"What is it?" Celeste flustered.

"Dogs, loads of 'em." He pointed outside and sure enough there was a pack of them, five all together flocking towards them from the distance.

"Mike!" Lisa screamed from the window. They waited, there was nothing else they could do.

"If he'd heard her he would have been out by now." Celeste thought to herself, her heart racing. As the three of them watched in horror from the safety of the ambulance, the entire horde of dogs darted passed the vehicle and straight into the bar.

"Mike!" Lisa screamed again, but only silence screamed back.


	10. A Colossal Blast

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Ten: A Colossal Blast

Agonising seconds drifted passed as Lisa, Celeste and Nathan waited in the ambulance. The smell of disinfectant made the air stale; it was a smell that Lisa had grown accustomed to in the bleak hospital corridors where she had worked. She wouldn't miss those corridors; they had always been filled with the haunted faces of the sick and dying. To nurse the sick better was one thing but Lisa had seen two lifetimes worth of suffering and if the hospital hadn't have crumbled to the ground it would eventually have been her.

A loud smash followed by a flash burst from the bar doorway, then another followed by a figure sprinting out of the bar.

"Open the doors!" Lisa called back to Nathan, he quickly obeyed and kicked the back doors open, the stranger leapt inside throwing the doors behind him. It wasn't Mike. The man was covered in blood, a scarf wrapped around his face below his eyes masked his expression but the way his eyes shot around the ambulance and at the faces around him told the others all hope was lost for Mike.

"Where's Mike?" Lisa shouted at the man who sat up and quickly pulled the scarf away from his face. He was young but as he sat up Celeste had noticed his uniform, he was an officer for the Raccoon Police Department, a cop.

"There was too many." The man said flustered, wiping blood from his brow.

"No." Lisa felt her heart drop into her stomach, tilting her head down with it. Celeste and Nathan traded shocked glances; '_What? He'd been inside a matter of seconds and that's it? Now he's not coming back?_' their faces had said.

"I couldn't." The man looked at all three of them but each of them wore the same vacant, shocked visage. Lisa recognized his voice suddenly from the radio broadcast, anger enveloped her. This man had called them, he had brought them to him and in return of saving his life they had lost one, they had lost Mike.

The reality of the situation was almost upon them when a glowing light emerged from the bar.

"Mike!" Lisa shouted, she opened her door and dropped out of the ambulance.

Sure enough there was Mike, limping backwards away from the doorway, in his hand was a bottle of whisky, newspaper stuffed into its neck, Mike had lit it and was holding it out in front of him, ready to throw it back into the bar.

"Get back into the ambulance, quick! Start the engine!" Mike yelled. Lisa spun around and did as he said before leaning over and throwing the passenger seat door open.

With the engine ready and a moment for Mike to get the timing right he threw the bottle with all his might, it span into the bar and exploded into a ball of flames. As he turned to run away one of the dogs leapt from the doorway doused in flames. It yelped and growled rabidly before making chase at Mike, an angry hell hound which despite being ablaze was bent on catching him.

Mike threw himself into the ambulance as it began to move.

"Everyone hold on!" Mike shouted. The group braced themselves as a colossal blast rocked the entire street. For a split second it was daytime, the street had broken into light revealing the true destruction it had suffered before being yanked back into the darkness. The sound itself had forced everyone to fold over, clamping their heads, their hands over their ears.

The ambulance swerved erratically as rubble rained over it until one larger piece the size of a large brick embedded itself into the windscreen. Lisa hit the breaks and covered her head incase any pieces fell through the hole in the roof above her.

The sound of crashing debris and twisting metal roared from the street behind them. Nathan cautiously opened one of the back doors as the others reformed their bearings. Several car alarms wailed around them. The entire bar was gone, the two buildings adjacent to it had partially collapsed and the road had been rendered useless by the rubble that littered it. Fire had engulfed the area and a burning stream shot out of the small mountain of ruin from what must have been a gas pipe.

"Whoa." Nathan looked in disbelief; he hadn't imagined hell to look much different.

"We thought you were dead… You okay?" Lisa asked Mike, he was wincing, holding his leg.

"Yeah, I'm not sure how, but yeah I'm alright." The pair looked back at the others and at their new passenger.

"You're from the R.P.D?" Celeste asked.

"Yeah. Not that it means anything now though, the whole place got taken over." The man said, wrapping his scarf around his hand.

"Taken over?" Lisa asked.

"It's full of those crazies, you must've seen them. When I got out they'd pretty much cleared the precinct." His voice shook, not the voice any of the others had expected to hear from someone wearing the uniform. The Raccoon Police Department was predominantly male, they played darts, drank at The Raccoon together and traded stories of corruption but this guy didn't fit the bill somehow.

"_He's just a kid,"_ Celeste thought _"Younger than me and he's scared to death."_

"So what's your name, kid?" Mike asked, positioning his leg so that it didn't hurt so much. How Mike had managed to stay so upbeat after what had happened was a wonder to the others.

"Jake." The young officer said distracted as he looked over his shoulder and at the blazing remains of the bar.

"Were there other people with you?" Celeste asked. She would have asked if he was all right, but it was more than clear he wasn't.

"No. There was a bunch of us, at the precinct. It was our first day," Jake's face flickered as the fire raged in the street; his glazed eyes took in the flames and bellowing smoke as they swept over the rubble, carried by the breeze. Celeste leant over and pulled the doors shut.

"There was so many of us, new recruits I mean, how can any of us have been ready for this? We only just started…" Jake said turning to the others. "And then out of nowhere everything just…" A look of pure confusion overcame his face. The others waited but Jake didn't continue.

"Everything just what?" Celeste pushed.

"Everything just… went crazy. People were attacking, biting each other." He looked up at her, his dark and watering eyes were suddenly dull, they looked taunted and broken by the horror he had seen, Celeste could feel it just looking back into them.

There was a pause as the others tried to imagine it. They pictured more of the frenzied, furious people like the woman they had tried to kill in the café. They pictured them taking over the entire Raccoon Police Department, lunging and tearing at people.

"Oh my God." Celeste whispered to herself.

"At the hospital they'd been getting lots of attacks, people with bites in A&E. I remember thinking how lucky it was they'd hired all these new nurses and medics... we'd never have been able to cope." Lisa said.

"It's like they knew, like they were preparing for it." Nathan said. Celeste caught the anger in his eyes, she knew exactly what he was thinking; _"Someone knew and didn't warn us. Someone's to blame for what's happened to Amanda." _

"Lisa, you said this whole thing could be some kind of mass-epidemic, right?" Celeste asked.

"Yeah. It would make sense." Lisa nodded.

"Well what about some kind of disease?"

"Like rabies?" Mike asked

"It's possible I guess, it could be a virus like rabies. The thing is, with modern day prophylaxis you just don't get outbreaks that _big_, not from anything I've ever heard of, and not here, not in a city like Raccoon."

"I don't wanna be here anymore." Jake said, he was clearly uncomfortable, rubbing the drying, sticky blood from his hands onto his trousers.

"This is what I keep saying. Can we just go?" Nathan urged.

"And don't take the interstate." Jake suddenly added.

"Why not?" Lisa asked.

"Coz about ten thousand people had the same idea. We had these reports coming in… Just trust me on this, we can't go."

"_We're never going to get out of here."_ Celeste thought to herself.

"Then we cut through the suburbs," Lisa leant over at the dials that littered the dashboard. "This thing's running out of gas, we need to sort that out first." The needle she was watching wavered, occasionally brushing the red 'empty', compromising their sense of security the ambulance provided.

"Hold on, why are we going to suburbs?" Nathan asked.

"There'll be less people for starters. It'll be more open, safer than it is here and if we get to the Tram Link we can follow the tracks straight to Arcley."

"Yeah but less people means less chance of finding help." Mike added.

"That's why we should think of getting somewhere safe, somewhere like Arcley. We can hold out in the suburbs for a while and then worry about finding help," Lisa said starting the engine. "We don't know the situation yet, for all we know Arcley could be worse than this. It's all we can do, unless someone has a better idea?"

"Alright, let's go," Nathan said, happy about the way Lisa had taken a firm hand in deciding what they should do next. He turned to Celeste and for just a second he could have sworn he'd seen Amanda in her place, sitting alone in the corner of the ambulance like she was waiting for something, for him to come and find her.

"It'll be over soon." Celeste reassured him. She sat next to him as the ambulance made its way towards the edge of the city. Neither of them knew just how wrong she had been; their nightmare was far from over, in fact, it had only just begun.


	11. Derry Downs

RESIDENT EVIL  
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford  
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Eleven: Derry Downs

The rising sun coldly but brightly lit an approaching sign as the last of the larger buildings shrank away into the distance. 'Welcome to Derry Downs' the old wooden sign had read, it was in need of a lick of paint as were the buildings that surrounded it.

Derry Downs was possibly the most rundown suburb in Raccoon City; it had received no attention from the mayor, the chief of police or any other authority within the city which meant it had never fully prospered. Industrialisation had drawn tourism, money and affluence into the city's center and away from the surrounding suburbs such as Derry.

"This place is a dump." Mike said, and while it was still a sight for sore eyes in comparison to where they'd come from, it was a lifeless, baron place.

The residents of Derry consisted of the elderly, living out their days in rows of small white houses, all of which were guaranteed to have flaking paint, porches with broken banisters and roofs with missing tiles. It was a town where people had stopped caring, not unlike the rest of Raccoon City.

"There should be a gas station on the other side of town," Lisa said as she watched Mike clamping his hands around his lower leg "Mike, you sure you're alright?" She asked quietly.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just not the most comfortable I've ever been." He smiled at her nervously. She had seen him hide the fresh blood on his jeans awkwardly with his shaking hands as she looked over at him.

"Did one of those dogs bite you?" She said looking straight ahead, careful not to the let the others hear as she drove.

"No," He replied slowly. The pause he had made before dismissing the bite was enough for Lisa to know he wasn't sure whether to admit it or not. He was lying and she knew why; if what had chased them out of the city was the result of a viral epidemic then Mike was now a part of it. Lisa didn't say anything, instead she took a deep, sharp breath and carried on driving, looking out for a sign that would direct them towards the gas station.

"There _was_ somebody else." Jake said solemnly. The others turned to him, confused.

"At the bar?" Mike asked.

"A girl."

"I didn't see anyone."

"One of those things bit her, she passed out behind the bar before you showed up."

"But –"

"The dogs got her, it's better the place went up in smoke," He turned to Lisa. "The bite, I think it made her sick." Lisa glanced at Mike.

"Maybe." She said, but Mike was staring out of the passenger window, he looked old, watching the dust rise out from behind the ambulance in the wing-mirror outside.

"But it's not your fault," Jake said to Mike brashly. "It's mine. It's me who should've been looking after her."

"It's no one's fault." Celeste said.

"Yeah it is," Nathan interrupted. "It's someone's fault that girl is dead, that all this has happened. That Amanda's dead." Celeste gripped his upper-arm.

"Don't say that."

"Well it's the truth isn't it?" Nathan said shrugging his arm back.

"It's not his fault," She said, gesturing at Jake. "It's not your fault. None of us did anything to deserve this. Yeah it's someone's fault, but it's not _ours_." She said sternly.

"You wouldn't know, you haven't lost anybody yet. You don't know what it's like to feel responsible for it," Nathan noticed her wince slightly, he'd hit a nerve. "Why not Celeste? Everyone else has, you must have lost someone." She locked solidly onto his eyes which were now eager for her answer.

"I didn't have anyone _to_ loose," She explained quietly, almost whispering. "I haven't lost anyone because I was alone."

"No one's totally alone." He threw back at her, how could she have possibly felt as alone as he had when he'd sat on the bed he'd shared with Amanda, the only person he'd ever cared about, looking at their photo back in the flat?

"When I was seventeen I had my little girl, my parents told me if I didn't give her up for adoption they'd kick me out on the streets. I didn't have anywhere to go, I didn't have a choice and when I realised what they'd made me do I just took off, alone. I know what it's like to loose someone." She'd spat out the story, rushed it reluctantly to prove a point, but the memories of her child had drawn out any resentment towards Nathan from her voice. "I've been working in that goddamn delicatessen's since, saving up so I can set up a good home to bring my daughter back to. I'm going to find her and bring her home... because I feel responsible for it, for loosing her."

"You didn't say anything." Nathan said concerned.

"We didn't need another reason to stick around." She forced a feeble smile.

"Ok guys, this is it. Let's do this quickly." Lisa maneuvered the ambulance next to the nearest gas pump.

"It's okay, let's fill this thing up and get out of here." Celeste put her hand on Nathan's shoulder and together they dropped out of the back of the ambulance brandishing two large bread knives from the drawer she had taken from his flat.

The gas station was empty with the exception of a rusting, red, vintage Cadillac which had been abandoned at the pump next to theirs, its engine was running, choking with all of its doors wide open, it was clearly empty, a handbag and its contents were sprawled across the sandy ground around it. A metal sign for gas squealed as it swung with the morning breeze. The sun had almost risen and while it allowed them to see more, it also made them notice the stillness more, Celeste wondered if perhaps the darkness was better.

"Celeste, Sorry about before." Nathan started.

"It's fine."

"I mean it, I shouldn't have –"

"And I mean its fine. Don't worry about it." She smiled sincerely at him before pouring the gas from the pump into the side of the ambulance; the meter began to tick upwards as it filled up.

"Think they'll mind if we don't pay?" Nathan asked, nodding towards the station's derelict front. The reinforced window glass had survived but behind it were the signs of a struggle, as if the place had been ransacked. Celeste smirked, drawing the gas pump out of the ambulance and throwing it to the ground.

"Nah." She said before her smile dropped. "Nathan!" He swung around finding himself face to face with an overweight man in dungarees, his sun burnt, swollen face screwed up into a display of dirty teeth. The man thrust his arms out quickly, grabbing Nathan by his shirt and pulling him towards his garish, yawning mouth. Instinctively he plunged his knife deep into the man's bulging stomach, twisting it. As it forced its way through the denim of his dungarees it slipped effortlessly into the blubbering flesh beneath, releasing a torrent of cold, black blood over Nathan's hand.

"Get off him!" Celeste yelled as she ran aside him and drove her knife deep into his shoulder blade, she jumped back pulling it out and releasing a flurry of the same septic, watery blood. The man was unfazed, if anything more determined to bring Nathan's face to his in an attempt to bite him. His face shook with anger as he snarled, his vacuous eyes blue marbles sunken into his fat, raw face.

Nathan struggled to push the man away from him, the fat man was weak but his weight gave him the kind of stability that the woman in the café they had encountered earlier didn't have. In one last push, Nathan managed to trip the man over, his bulk collapsing backwards into the dust. He suddenly looked ridiculous; angry, rolling in the dirt, struggling like a frustrated, podgy toddler in his filthy, soiled dungarees.

"Look." Nathan pointed, several more figures had begun to appear, slowly but collectively creeping from open doors and around corners in the distance. Quickly he picked up the gas pump and doused the fat man before whipping it around, soaking the ground and the pump itself. He looked up at Celeste who quickly felt her pockets and pulled out her lighter.

"Step on it! We're leaving!" Nathan called. The engine started promptly and Jake opened the back doors, reaching out, helping the couple in. Celeste chucked the lighter out at the fat man as she clambered in and the entire area quickly erupted into flames. The fat man screamed, not in pain or fear but frustration that Nathan had gotten away. As they drove off the flames engulfed the man completely, cooking his flapping, obese body on the ground before swallowing the entire gas station in an explosion of fire.

The ambulance shook on the road as a mushroom of smoke and flame rose out of Derry.

"How many places are we going to have to blow up before we get somewhere safe?" Nathan joked nervously, his arms sore from being clamped so strongly.

"We can't stay here," Celeste said wiping the blood from her knife onto a blanket in the back of the ambulance. "There were so many of them." The image had haunted her, the lifeless people wondering from their porches, drawn to Nathan and herself from wherever they'd been standing dormant. "They heard us and they all started coming." Celeste had carried on wiping the knife which was now spotless until Nathan put his hand on her back.

"We've got a full tank; we'll be way out of here in no time, _way_ out." He assured. Celeste broke into tears suddenly, she wanted it to be over right there and then, she wanted to wake up in her flat and realise it had all been a terrible dream, to realise that life is too short, that she should begin her search for her daughter that very day. But no matter how hard she cried with her eyes clasped shut and her body folded over; she could still feel the moment of the ambulance, Nathan's hand on her back, the terrible reality that everything that had happened was real.


End file.
